Man hospitalised after falling in Anish Kapoor installation

The work at the Serralves museum, which includes a gaping hole, is part of the artist's first institutional show in Portugal

The interior of Anish Kapoor's installation Descent into Limbo (1992) at the Fundação de Serralves, Museum of Contemporary Art in PortoPhoto: Filipe Braga; Courtesy Fundação de Serralves, Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto

A visitor to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Serralves museum in Porto was hospitalised this week after falling inside one of the British artist’s installations, which features a 2.5-metre-deep hole. It is not clear whether he fell into the hole or beside it.

A spokesman for the museum says that the “visitor is OK [and] almost ready to return home”. He added that “security protocol was followed” and there are warning signs as well as a member of gallery staff inside the installation. It has been temporarily closed while the institution assesses what happened but it hopes to reopen it “in a few days”. According to the Público newspaper, the injured man is Italian and around 60 years old.

The work, Descent into Limbo (1992), consists of a cube-shaped building, which can be entered by visitors, with a circular hole in the centre of its floor. The sides of the hole are coated in black pigment, giving the illusion of a depthless void.

Anish Kapoor: Works, Thoughts, Experiments (until 6 January 2019) is the artist’s first major institutional show in Portugal.

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